“The most important thing is braking into the hairpin and getting a good run out of there,” Kelly said.

“That’s one of the trickiest corners in the country. There are six different ways you can take it. You can go wide and drop down into the bowl and accelerate straight. There are cars that run the mid-line all the way around. It’s interesting to see how drivers produce the same result from so many different lines around that one corner.”

Even when you get it right, the wait is not over.

“You’re nervous because you know there’s so little between each car that if you post your lap a minute or two before the chequered flag it’s a very nervous wait to see if you’re going to get pipped or how far down the list you are going to drop.

“As soon as you post a good lap around there, even though it was good, you are already thinking about the half a 10th you could have gotten if you’d done something different.”

Kelly set his lap record of 51.4713 seconds in 2009 driving a Jack Daniels Racing Commodore on soft tyres.

The race he remembers most at Symmons was in his championship-winning year of 2006. “I went off the track and got a foam signage board stuck in the front of the car and I was going to have to pit because it was blocking the air intake,” Kelly said.

“I managed to play around with the car in front of me and use the air circulation from it to dislodge the foam and I stayed out and finished the race, which was critical to my championship.”

Kelly competed in the Mark Webber Challenge adventure race three years ago.

“We saw so many great things and I really hold that event and the state close to my heart,” he said.

“Each year we’ve been talking about going to Tassie for a week in a motorhome and we haven’t managed to do it yet.